Icecream and Treasure Chests
by tashasfic
Summary: cause that's what their freindship is based on.


Ice-Cream and Treasure Chests  
  
by  
Tasha  
  
Disclaimer: The X-men aren't mine.  
  
Note: Some of my words may be in British English, while others may be in American English. I'm sorry if this causes any confusion.  
  
This fic is set in the early years (pre-evoverse) when Jean and Scott are the only two students.  
  
Set between the Starbucks Café and McDonalds, the 'Pirates Cove' is a small ice-cream parlor at the Bayville Mall. It's interior resembles the hold of a pirate's ship, the fake gold doubloons and gleaming swords that adorn the walls, along with it's waiters dressed up in pirate costumes which would not look out of place at an extremely elaborate Halloween Party.  
  
The restaurant is a place frequented by most children at Bayville, it's ambience combined with it's large servings of creamy, delicious ice-cream sundaes smothered in various chocolate or butterscotch sauces, making it a popular place to hold any child's birthday party, club meeting, or class outing. Mothers had even been known to bribe their children with promises of their child's favorite Pirates Dessert if they only did well in their upcoming tests.  
  
Though always filled with children, it was not visited as much by teenagers who preferred trendier hangouts or as many put it, "someplace where they didn't still give you crayons to color in the pictures on the paper table mats." So it was a strange sight for most parents dropping of their children for an ice-cream, to see two teenagers, a boy and a girl both sitting at a secluded booth in a corner, each wearing a black paper eye- patch, and a black paper pirate's hat which came with their orders of ice- cream of gigantic proportions.  
  
They sat there, eating their dessert, oblivious to the few stares and amused smiles they unconsciously elicited from the various adults escorting their charges into the restaurant.  
  
An hour later they left, as quietly as they came. It would be another year before they visited the 'Pirate's Cove' once again to repeat the afternoon they had just spent.  
  
It was six years ago when they had come to this restaurant for the first time. It had been her first day away from her home at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters, and in an effort to cheer her up from having had to leave her parents, Ororo, one of the Institute's instructors, had offered to take her out for some ice-cream at the mall where she had to run some errands. The girl, Jean, had agreed, only to find out moments before they left that Professor Xavier had insisted that they take the institute's other student, a boy named Scott with them as well.  
  
She was only ten, and like most girls her age, was not particularly fond of boys, even though she often preferred their games of tag and baseball to playing with Barbie dolls; but this boy, though she didn't know anything about him yet, - except for his name, she didn't particularly mind, mostly because she felt sorry for him. He was, after all blind. He had a tightly wrapped bandage around his eyes, which Ororo had told her he always wore, but she hadn't been told why, and she, mindful of her mother's instructions that it was rude to ask questions, hadn't asked. She was glad however, that he had put on a pair of dark glasses to cover his bandage which would avoid unnecessary stares of passers by which she, being an introvert by nature, shied away from.  
  
They drove to the mall in absolute silence with the soft music playing on the radio, the only sound to fill the quietness, and once they reached their destination, Ororo, escorted them to the Ice-Cream Parlor, before leaving them, much to the girl's horror to visit a shop.  
  
They sat quietly in a booth at the back of the restaurant an uncomfortable silence pervading, until she, hesitatingly asked, "Would you like me to read you the menu, Scott?"  
  
He shrugged, but nodded his head, and she proceeded to read out the various items listed before her, till he interrupted her with a question.  
  
"What do you look like?"  
  
"Excuse me?" she had asked in return, confused.  
  
"What do you look like?" he repeated, enunciating each syllable as if speaking to an exceptionally dumb person.  
  
"Uh.... I'm tall, about two inches taller than you, I think; and I have green eyes and red hair," she answered hesitatingly; unsure of what exactly she was supposed to say.  
  
"Is it long?" he asked. "Your hair, I mean."  
  
"Yeah, pretty long. It comes to below my shoulders. I want to cut it, but my mom wont let me."  
  
He didn't respond to this, so she decided to go on in their conversation. "Why do you want to know?"  
  
He sighed in exasperation before answering, "I like to know what the person sitting next to me looks like, if you don't mind very much."  
  
She instantly regretted her question. "I'm sorry."  
  
He looked surprised at her apology. "It's okay."  
  
"So, uh... anything else you want to know?" she asked, anxious to make up for her past mistake.  
  
"What can you do?" he asked.  
  
"Do?"  
  
"With your powers. Your 'gift' as the Professor calls it."  
  
"I'm telepathic, but I'm not very good at it. I can't read any particular mind I want to – like I can't read your's right now, or block out really strong thoughts either. I'm also telekinetic, but I can only move about small stuff – nothing which I can't pick up with my hands anyway," she replied.  
  
"That's better than mine," he said with a sigh, leaning back into his seat.  
  
"What can you do?" It was her turn to ask.  
  
"My eyes shoot lasers from them. It's like this red light comes out and breaks anything it touches. They're pretty strong. The Prof. Wants to measure how much, but he hasn't thought of a way to do it yet," he paused before continuing, "I can't control them, so I have to wear the bandage to make sure I don't open my eyes by mistake."  
  
"I'm sorry," she said once again.  
  
"It's not your fault."  
  
Neither spoke for several minutes, and then, she resumed reading the menu out to him.  
  
"How did your's start?" he blurted out suddenly.  
  
"My powers?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
She paused, unsure of how to answer this. "My best friend and I were playing, when she got hit by a car," her voice quivered, but she continued, "I felt her die then; - It was the telepathy. I went into a coma after that, but I could hear everyone's voices inside my head till Professor Xavier made it go away, and woke me up."  
  
"Sorry." It was his turn to apologize.  
  
"Me too." She stared at one of the dangling swords above their table before asking him the inevitable question, "What about your powers?"  
  
Now it was his turn to pause. "There was a plane accident. My parents strapped the last two parachutes onto my little brother and me. They died in the accident. I fell down and hit my head and blacked out. I don't know what happened to my brother. I was in a coma as well."  
  
"Oh," she answered awkwardly.  
  
"I'm hungry," he stated suddenly. "What's the largest thing they have here?"  
  
"It' the 'Pirate's Treasure Chest," she answered, quickly scanning the menu." It has six scoops of ice-cream, one chocolate, two vanilla, two butterscotch and one strawberry, with a chocolate brownie, all assembled on a waffle bed with hot fudge and butterscotch sauce and walnuts and whipped cream on top. Oh, and you get a Pirate's eye-patch and hat with it."  
  
"Cool. I'll have that," he said.  
  
"The whole thing?" she asked incredulously. "You'll be sick."  
  
"No I wont, and it sounds good," he replied before suggesting, "Why don't you have it as well?"  
  
"I don't think we should eat so much ice-cream. Professor Xavier might not like it," she answered.  
  
"Chicken," he responded.  
  
"I am not!" she exclaimed, rising to his bait.  
  
"Then order the 'treasure chest'," he challenged her.  
  
"Fine," she said, before placing their order with a waiter who looked dubiously at the two children before saying, "That's going to be a lot of ice-cream, kids."  
  
"We know," Scott had said. "We can handle it."  
  
"When Ororo returned forty minutes later, she was pleasantly surprised to see the two children talking animatedly, a black eye-patch over one of Jean's eyes, and over one lens of Scott's sun glasses, a black hat perched on each of their heads, and two large ice-cream dishes in front of them.  
  
"You two sure ate a lot of ice-cream," she said, looking at the bill as she pulled a few dollar notes out of her purse.  
  
"But it was so good," Scott protested.  
  
"The best ice-cream ever," Jean had added.  
  
"Well, just don't make it a habit," Ororo had answered, pleased to see the girl finally opening up.  
  
Neither of them thought the ice-cream had been such a good idea on the ride home.  
  
They went to the 'Pirate's Cove' and did the same thing the year after that, and the year after that one, and by the fourth year, it was an established tradition between them.  
  
They no longer really like to eat that much ice-cream at one sitting. Scott prefers single, plain chocolate ice-cream cones, and Jean doesn't like whipped cream. Nonetheless they visit the restaurant every year, not just to eat the ice-cream, but to celebrate the anniversary of their friendship.  
  
Some people are brought together by circumstance, others bond over similar interests. Their friendship is special. It was formed in a treasure chest with two of the sweetest things in the world, ice-cream and a childlike innocent curiosity.  
  
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Feedback is appreciated as always.  
  
I don't own Starbucks, McDonalds, and the 'Pirate's Cove' is a made up figment of my imagination. 


End file.
